


Sleeptalk With Me

by a_gay_poster



Category: Naruto
Genre: Confessions, GaaLeeGaa Holiday Exchange, M/M, Post-Kimimaro Fight, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Shippuden, Sleep talking, semi-unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-25 00:53:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22007266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_gay_poster/pseuds/a_gay_poster
Summary: “What is it?” Gaara whispered. “What do you see?”Lee smacked his lips, the sound wet and echoing in Gaara’s ear.“The turtles … I tore up their contract,” Lee mumbled, “and now they’repissed.”During a joint mission to Snow Country, Gaara discovers that Lee has a unique sleep habit.
Relationships: Gaara/Rock Lee
Comments: 102
Kudos: 488
Collections: Fics that keep me up, GaaLee / LeeGaa Holiday Exchange, why im sleep deprived 💖✨





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [It_is_a_reference](https://archiveofourown.org/users/It_is_a_reference/gifts).



> This is for [It_is_a_reference](https://archiveofourown.org/users/it_is_a_reference) for the [GaaLeeGaa Holiday Exchange](http://gaaleegaaholidayexchange.tumblr.com/)! You said you liked cute confessions, so I hope you enjoy this slightly weird take on this prompt! In typical fashion, the scope of this fic got away from me, so the final two chapters will be posted in the next few days. Happy holidays!
> 
> Shout out to [@scarletcloack](https://scarletcloack.tumblr.com/) for the sharing the ridiculous clickbait article that formed the inspiration for this story! The title was inspired by [Sleepwalk With Me by YOUNG GALAXY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePQCKFpa4cc). 
> 
> Also, the map I used to plot their journey is [this one, by xshadowrebirthx on DeviantArt](https://www.deviantart.com/xshadowrebirthx/art/Elemental-Nations-Geographical-Map-317422439), although I played it fast and loose with travel time for narrative convenience. 
> 
> See the end notes for warnings (may contain spoilers).

_The woods are lovely, dark and deep,_

_But I have promises to keep,_

_And miles to go before I sleep,_

_And miles to go before I sleep._

\- Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost

* * *

* * *

In the far north of Snow Country, Orochimaru had a hidden base of operations--a lab for human experimentation and jutsu development. Or so the mission scroll said, when Gaara read it in the foyer of the home he now shared with his brother and sister.

He had a room there now, a proper one, on the second floor and just down the hall from Temari.

“If you ever need any help,” she had said, when she first showed him the dimly lit room, freshly scrubbed but with dust still swirling in the air, with its low bookshelves and the standard-issue bed he now used for flat storage.

Gaara never had, and he suspected he never would.

He didn’t know who slept in his room before he did, though he suspected someone had. There were paler rectangles in the stucco, in the shape of picture frames now removed from walls. And in the hot midday when everyone else was resting, he sometimes smelled human sweat beneath the alkaline stench of the cleaner Temari favored.

The room still didn’t feel like _his_ , yet. As impermanent as a hotel room, as transitory as a travel camp. The space rang sterile and impersonal, despite his clothing in the cupboards and his toothbrush on the sink.

Temari’s room was full of hanging fans. There were tidily embroidered pillows in front of her low desk and photographs of her friends from the Academy on her windowsill. Once a week in the springtime, after the rains of the wet season left the desert all in bloom, she meticulously created an _ikebana_ arrangement in the kitchen. She set the woody stems and sharp thorns in a special vase on the altar in the corner of her room, in front of the white-framed picture of their mother. It was something all kunoichi had to learn in the Academy, she told Gaara, who had never attended. To hear her say it, she considered the classes an outdated relic of an older way of life, a waste of time when she could have been learning new and crueler ways to kill a man … but every Saturday from March to May, Gaara watched her hunched over the kitchen sink with a pair of shears, deft fingers arranging hardy desert flowers, holding them to the light. Squinting, then adjusting them again.

Kankuro slept in his workshop under the stairs, on a pile of blankets that Gaara never saw him wash. The workshop was undeniably Kankuro’s space: wooden limbs hanging from the trestles and inset shelves of bottled poisons dug into the walls. He collected things, too--things that had nothing at all to do with puppets or poisons--little mechanical figurines made of wood and metal, sublimely precise with their gears and mechanisms. When Gaara watched him, unseen but not undetected, Kankuro would often sit, legs kicked up on his workbench, and simply … play. It was confusing, at first, to see his brother fidgeting with them, winding the toys’ simple clockwork springs and letting them roam about his desktop until they clattered to the floor, clicking and whirring. Gaara had analyzed the activity for purpose--any battle-ready tactic that Kankuro might have been learning from the behavior--and drawn up short. When he asked Kankuro about it, he had only shrugged.

“It’s just fun, kid,” he had said, and offered no further explanation.

Gaara wasn’t sure how to decorate his space, or even if he should--if he was guaranteed to stay long enough to make the effort worth it. Besides, the things that interested him did not lend themselves easily to ornament; he had no dainty desert flowers or tiny clockwork figurines to adorn his shelves, just sand and the smell of rust. And the ways and means that Gaara devised seemed more likely to frighten his siblings than to instill any real sense of hominess.

At some point, he supposed, he would need to develop interests. Hobbies, as it were, that weren’t training … or killing. Since his awakening--the moment he had been pulled from the dark waters of his mind and left dry and gasping on the shore, the sun of acceptance beating down on him so harsh it burned his skin--he had thrown himself into his own redemption. Hours were spent in quiet contemplation, schooling himself to follow orders and tamping down on his darker impulses. When he wasn’t out in the desert, carefully honing his control over the immense chakra he previously let flow free, he spent his time at the training field, under the watchful eye of his siblings’ teacher, who he supposed was now his teacher, too. Despite twenty-four free and sleepless hours per day, there was little time left for leisure activities or the cultivation of any real, human occupations. At least, not between his rigorous schedule of self-discipline and the tentative, searching spans he spent seeking common ground with his siblings, attempting to weave a bond from the frayed thread between them.

Temari left him one of her arrangements, once: a fresh stem of candelilla and a desert poppy nestled in a sandstone pot. The stems were supple when he fiddled with them, turning them this way and that until the careful arrangement had been all but destroyed. Gaara had placed it on his windowsill until it bleached and turned to rot. One day he returned home to discover it gone, and found Temari scrubbing the pot with a handbrush in the kitchen, muttering to herself something he couldn’t understand.

On bad nights, he still slipped the confines of the compound and fled to the tiny house on its outskirts. It was the place where he once lived with Yashamaru, and later lived alone. The smells and sounds of humanity were something Gaara hadn’t expected to have to adjust to, after years of living on his own. Everything Kankuro owned smelled like grease and sweat, from the cloth wrappings of his puppets to the air in his workshop when it wafted through the door, and Temari’s clothes smelled like the spices from her cooking. Sometimes Kankuro would disappear into his workshop for hours, well before the sun went down, and Gaara only knew he slept by the snores that rattled through the house’s hollow spaces, audible even through the floor. When the moon was high and full, that quiet rattle was enough to send Gaara’s pulse racing, and drive him into the quiet outdoors.

No matter how far he walked, his footsteps always led him back to his childhood home. His room in the humble shack was no more _his_ than the one in his siblings’ house, more prison cell than place of comfort, but at least it smelled _right_ , like blood and granite. And it was quiet inside, still as a tomb, with nothing but the wind whistling through the gaps in the windows--cracks Gaara had created and never learned to patch--and the whispering in his head.

In Yashamaru’s house, there was a divot under the corner of the threadbare carpet, where Gaara had once played when he had mistaken himself for a child. Under it, he had hidden an old stuffed bear. He took it out, some nights, in the still hours when Mother was quiet and Shukaku was all too loud. He would find himself cradling it in the middle of the floor, talking to it to drown out the noise in his mind.

He snuck there now, before they left on their mission, to say goodbye. It would be two months before they returned, and the house would sit empty in the meantime. Temari and Kankuro had once had a caretaker, apparently, who came and helped with meals and cleaning while their father was at work. Gaara had never met them. Once they heard he moved in, they refused to return to the house.

On his knees on the thin carpet over bare stone, Gaara considered slipping the toy into his pack. Who would he speak to, when his siblings and their jounin captain were asleep, and he was awake alone all night? Their trip would span two full moons: two weeks where the swelling light in the sky would match the crescendo of noise in his head, two long nights where the sun’s reflection would burn the border wall between himself and the demon paper-thin.

At the last moment he thought better of it, stuffing the bear back into the hole and straightening the rug over its aperture. It would be a long journey, first a leg northward into Fire Country to collect the other half of their team for the joint mission--Konoha, of course, had as vested an interest as Suna did in bringing Orochimaru to his knees, and neither village trusted the other to share intel openly just yet--and then cutting out east the long way round the Sound Village to skirt the coast of Haran Bay, traveling slow and quiet, the use of chakra and jutsu forbidden as they traversed Lightning to Gaikotsu Bay, before they crossed islands more ice than earth to land them in Snow Country and hopefully at the rumored base.

“You ready to go, shortstack?” Kankuro asked, when Gaara returned to the foyer, his pack smushed against his gourd. The bulk of the two jockeyed for space on his back, and already each shoulder ached at the thought of carrying them both without the aid of chakra.

Gaara nodded, and Kankuro raised his hand towards Gaara’s head. He aborted the gesture, as he always did, at the warning rustle of sand. Gaara knew Kankuro meant to ruffle his hair, sometimes even leaned in as if to accept it, the same way he had begun responding to Kankuro’s nicknames. He was familiar with the action, from children that he watched distantly on the playground, and from Temari’s fingers roughly scrubbing at Kankuro’s scalp during rare moments of affection. But there was a fear, too, that dug its claws in his stomach, a whispered voice that told him, _If he touches you, you will cripple him_.

“Let’s go then.” Temari snapped her fan shut along her back, an unnecessary gesture of nerves, and led them through the front door to meet Baki.

* * *

The journey to Konoha was brief as a dust storm and unmarked as a sand dune, and they met Team Gai at the looming gates of the Leaf Village.

Rock Lee greeted Gaara with a grin and a wave. Gaara bristled at the gesture, sparks and flickers of discomfort climbing his spine. The remainder of his team were not quite so welcoming. Terse nods were exchanged all around, and as they began their sojourn north, Gaara could feel the eyes of Lee’s teacher burning into his back. He was aware, too, of the way Lee’s teammates positioned themselves, flanking Lee on either side, as if anyone other than their jounin leader had a chance of defending him against Gaara, should Gaara reveal a killing intent.

They traveled fast until they reached the border of Fire Country, tree-hopping until the branches near the coast grew too thin to support even a shinobi’s chakra-augmented weight. Gaara found his eyes strayed far too often to Lee. He had been slow, the last time Gaara had seen him, dragged down by the weight of the injuries Gaara had inflicted on his arm and leg. There were bone fragments in his spine, he had told Gaara on the long walk back to Konoha, when he was slumped over Gaara’s shoulder, his body warm even through the sand armor.

“I wish I could just pull my backbone out like that bone fellow!” Lee had exclaimed, and then barked a laugh that turned into a cough. “It would have made the surgery much easier on everyone,” he’d said, as Gaara had forced him to sit down on a rock and take a drink (from Gaara’s own canteen, not the dubious bottle of ‘medicine’ Lee carried in his hip pouch).

Lee still didn’t seem quite back in fighting trim, as they hit the border of Hot Spring Country and wound up the coast. The soil was coarse there, sandier, putting the Suna team at an advantage where Team Gai stumbled on the thin earth. _Slow_ , from the perspective of Rock Lee, was still faster than any typical genin, so he kept pace just fine … but Gaara noticed that he fatigued more easily than the others. He was the first to fall asleep when night came, snoring swaddled in his bedroll before even the last of the dinner dishes had been dried and packed away.

The group’s lone insomniac, Gaara volunteered to keep night watch. To his mind, this was logical. However, even his team didn’t wholly trust his stability, and so assigned him a rotating shift of minders of his own.

In Gaara’s opinion, it was a waste of manpower. But he wasn’t the one calling the shots (yet), and if he wanted to prove that he had the capability to be a _good_ shinobi, rather than just a powerful one, he needed to follow orders.

Biting his tongue in a way still unfamiliar, he quickly picked up on the habits of Team Gai, the subtle ways in which their sunlit personalities shifted slightly once it fell dark.

Hyuuga Neji refused to stay by the low, smokeless fire. Instead he insisted on vanishing into the woods to ‘patrol’. As strident of a rule-follower as he was by daylight, Gaara suspected he was doing very little ‘patrolling’ at all. Hyuuga tended to return to the camp at the end of his shift with fingerprint-shaped bruises at his own chakra points, marks that he _henge_ d away before waking the next watch.

Tenten only sharpened her blades in silence, whetstone brandished like a second weapon, and her eyes spent more time on Gaara than on the surround. It didn’t bother him. He was used to being mistrusted.

Maito Gai engaged in ridiculous challenges to keep himself awake. He attempted for what probably in his mind passed for silence, but his grunts of effort as he did single finger push-ups were enough, Gaara was sure, to give their position away to any keen-eared shinobi who might be nearby. In between grueling bouts of exercise, he sometimes stared at Gaara with an intensity that made Gaara’s skin crawl. Once or twice he opened his mouth, finger raised as if he were about to launch into one of his Speeches on Youth and Inspiration, but just as quickly his mouth would snap shut.

But most interesting of all was Rock Lee. Once roused from the depths of his slumber with a salute that cracked against his forehead and sent Gaara wincing, he had no compunction whatsoever about sitting side-by-side. He watched the campfire burn low with Gaara in the chill of the woods from mere inches away, where the others would gladly take a log on the opposite side of the fire or a branch in a nearby tree. The proximity was harrowing, and Gaara’s mind whispered all the ways that he could maim him, all the ways that he could make that nearness hurt. Lee was still impaired, and his teacher slow to rouse. It would be the work of moments to reach out, silent as a bloodstain, and-

Lee’s voice split the silence in a laugh. That was the other thing about him: he talked, too … talked a lot, actually, as though he were uncomfortable with the silence Gaara clung to. The firelight flashed in his dark eyes when he spoke, and its flickering reminded Gaara of the stories Sunan mothers would tell their children, about glass-eyed demons who stalked the streets, peeking into windows and snatching youngsters who stayed up past their bedtimes with lariats of sand.

* * *

“So you’ve never slept at all?” Lee asked him one night. He was balanced on one leg with a stack of Tenten’s scrolls on his head.

“No,” Gaara replied over his knees pulled up by his crossed arms, watching the fire pop and spark. “Or, not that I can remember.”

“Don’t you get sleepy?”

“If I do, it doesn’t feel any different from normal.”

“You wouldn’t know if you were tired?” Lee’s face by firelight was a mask of contradictions: softly lit round cheeks and huge, shadowy eyes. He looked more nightmare than boy, owlish as he contorted into ever more ridiculous poses.

Gaara shrugged. “Sometimes my back hurts from the gourd, and I want to set it down. If it’s the same as that, then …”

Lee raised his arms and extended them out to either side, his wingspan casting shadows across the space where Gaara sat, curled into himself. He bent his knee until it almost reached his chest, crucified in crane pose. Overhead, the pale three-quarters moon struggled for purchase against the fire’s simmer.

“Incredible,” Lee breathed, attention rapt. “How do you manage it?” His posture lost some of its ramrod straightness as he leaned eagerly towards Gaara, looming forward like a bird of prey just before its talons scraped the ground.

“Chakra control.” Gaara hugged his legs closer, against his vulnerable stomach, full of organs and blood. “If I feel my chakra stores running low, I can meditate until I feel ready to continue.”

“Amazing!” Lee’s eyes blazed brighter than the fire in front of them or the stars overhead. “Your stamina must be incredible! I would like to emulate it, although I will not be able to rely on my chakra.”

“Too many days without sleep will kill a normal person.”

“Hmm.” Lee furrowed his heavy brow, an expression both exaggerated and comical, and, with a _haa!_ of breath that sent goosebumps skittering up the down of Gaara’s arms, shifted his weight until he was standing on the other leg. The stack of scrolls perched on his bowlcut wavered, but did not fall. “If I cannot figure out a way to stay awake for the next week, I will walk the remainder of the distance to Snow Country on my hands!” he declared.

Lee’s self-rule was a fool’s errand. Gaara knew this from the outset. But the following morning, as the group sat around the fire eating bowls of bland rice porridge, the hems of their cloaks growing hoary with salty frost from the wind blowing off Haran Bay, Lee clenched his fist and declared, “I would like to volunteer to take night watch moving forward!”

“What, like, _all_ of it?” Kankuro asked, painted eyebrows furrowed. There was a grain of rice on his purple lower lip, like a maggot on a rotting eggplant.

“Yes!” Lee’s chopsticks cracked in his hand as he held his fist aloft. It was his fourth broken set in the scant week they had been traveling. “It is part of a personal challenge to improve my stamina, inspired by your impressive brother!”

Gaara could feel the eyes of every person around the fire on him, but he ignored them in favor of taking a slow, considered sip of tea.

“If you think you can match Gaara in anything,” Temari said slowly, “then you’re even dumber than you look.”

“With all due respect, I will not have you insulting my precious student’s looks or intelligence!” Gai boomed. A few birds fluttered from the nearby trees at his outburst, and Baki gave him a warning glare, hand coming to his throat to make a gesture that was half shushing, half threat of dismemberment.

The group devolved into squabbling, but Gaara’s scalp still prickled with the feeling of being watched.

When he looked up from his empty teacup, Lee was watching him, eyes ablaze.

* * *

However loud the banter had gotten, Lee was able to secure permission to take the next week’s worth of night watches. The others seemed happy enough to grant it to him, in fact; though whether that was due to sleep deprivation or a simple desire to spend as few silent, lonely hours with Gaara as possible, Gaara couldn’t say.

Exhaustion loosed Lee’s tongue and drove him to ever more absurdist exercises in his attempts to stay awake. By the fourth night, he was doing drowsy handstands, pressing his whole body into the air with his fingertips, legs bobbing and weaving in the air as he intermittently dozed mid-press-up.

“You can’t use chakra at all?” Gaara asked him then. A strange, liminal curiosity had started licking at the edge of his consciousness. Something about Lee--about his strangeness, the way he defied shinobi conventions--frustrated and drew him all at once.

Lee hummed, and his foot jostled idly mid-air as he thought.

“No,” he said finally, “not really.”

“So your performance at the chuunin exams …”

“Was all the result of hard work and rigorous training!”

Gaara found it hard to believe, but when he concentrated, he couldn’t feel the slightest flicker of chakra control coming off Lee. Lee’s chakra signature was immense--detectable even at the distance Gaara spanned when he left the camp to scour the woods as the moon grew higher and fuller--but it burned the same steady flare at all times, never surging or twisting as in a jutsu.

“You turned bright red,” Gaara said, as if that would convince Lee otherwise. “You jumped dozens of feet in the air. You kicked me _through the sand barrier_. That wasn’t all _taijutsu_.”

Lee tugged at the neck of his jumpsuit. He and his teacher must have had several such identical suits in their packs, though Gaara had not yet caught them at changing. Another curiosity: how did he put it on and take it off when there were no visible zippers or fastenings?

“Well, that’s … it’s a _secret technique_ ,” Lee spluttered. His face, already flushed with blood, went yet redder. “I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

“But it’s not a ninjutsu or genjutsu,” Gaara pressed.

Lee shook his head.

“You can’t do any ninjutsu or genjutsu _at all_ ,” Gaara repeated, disbelievingly.

“Well, I can do _some_ … ” Lee rolled to his feet with a rushing sigh and walked to a nearby tree, shaking out his arms with shoulder and elbow joints cracking. “Here, watch.”

Lee clenched his fists and, with his face scrunched in effort, struggled a few pathetic steps up the side of the trunk before falling back to the ground. It was simple, genin-level stuff. Hell, an academy student in Suna was required to scale the side of a mesa with chakra control alone before they were allowed to graduate.

“ _How_?” Gaara breathed.

“You just focus your chakra in the soles of your feet- ” Lee began, lips pursed in confusion.

“No,” Gaara cut him off. “How are you not dead?”

Lee hiccuped a laugh and caught it in his fist. “Ah, well. Gai-sensei says I’m a genius of hard work! Even in the academy, I could never get jutsu quite right. I wouldn’t have even graduated if he hadn’t picked me for his team right away.” Gaara nodded. This was reasonable. A shinobi who could use neither ninjutsu nor genjutsu could hardly be expected to survive. Lee continued, “He says there’s something wrong with my chakra pathways--they’re ‘burnt out’? Something like that. Anyway, because of that I had to train my body into peak physical form to be able to compete with the likes of geniuses like you and Neji!”

“Burnt out,” Gaara repeated. His eyes narrowed as he tried to fix Lee in his vision, trying to assemble the pieces of him into something that made sense.

Lee caught Gaara’s eye and tugged at the collar of his jumpsuit, squirming. “Well … I don’t remember it that well, but before I was sent to the orphanage, my aunt and uncle raised me. They weren’t … hmm …” Lee flipped back onto his hands and resumed his press-ups. His thick brows drew together in the middle of his forehead.

“Oh drat, I’ve forgotten where I stopped. I guess I’ll have to start again from ‘one’.” Gaara could have told him he had stopped at fifty-eight, but Lee hadn’t asked him, so he said nothing. Lee began counting again in between his sentences, voice watery with strain. “Uh, they weren’t exactly- What’s the best way to put it? … They weren’t _happy_ with having another mouth to feed, and a talentless one at that. They tried a lot of different ways to- um, to break me of my natural lack of talent. Some of them more … forceful ... than others.”

At the apex of his twenty-fifth (eighty-third) press-up, Lee forced another little laugh, this one somewhat more hysterical than the last. Tears were gathering at the corners of his eyes, which were clenched shut with effort.

“Turns out the body’s not really equipped for some of that. I understand, though. I was a burden on them, and they needed me to get into the Academy and start bringing home a genin salary as quickly as possible. So I could pay them back for all they did for me. Um- ” Lee shook his head, and a few tears splattered wetly from his face, hissing where they hit the warm logs of the fire. “- sorry, I don’t … I don’t like to talk about them much. They still resent me, I think. I don’t hold a grudge, though. It must have been hard, dealing with me for so long.”

Something stirred in Gaara’s chest, like a snake uncoiling from its den. Perhaps Lee, for all his brash and intrusive _difference_ , was more like him than Gaara had ever realized. His fingers clenched on his knees, but he couldn’t think of a single word to say to make it better. He tasted copper on his tongue and realized he was biting the inside of his cheek. The sand rustled in his gourd when he opened his mouth to spit the blood onto the ground. He stared at it for a long moment. The moon, reflected in the glossy pool and seven-eighths full, stared back like an animal’s unblinking eye. Though his skin prickled, the sight panicked him less, now.

“They wanted you to be a weapon,” he said, at long last.

“Every shinobi is a weapon, Gaara-kun.”

What sort of weapon, then, was a shinobi who lived and killed only for himself--unbalanced and indiscriminate? In the blue-white heat of the fire, Gaara could see the outline of a sword, beaten out of shape so that it faltered and cut its wielder. The whispering in his ears spoke of a bowstring snapping, so that an archer’s arrow nocked in his own foot. Lee’s sweat spattered the soil beside his blood, and he looked up at the tense lines of Lee’s face. Then, was Lee a blunt instrument or a finely honed blade?

Gaara’s gaze tracked from his own hands to Lee’s. He dug his fingers, moonlight-pale and unblemished, against the fabric of his cloak. He felt, for the barest instant, the prick of his nails against his skin through the waxed canvas, before the cork rattled free of the gourd and a whisper of sand cushioned his fingertips. Lee’s hands, meanwhile, dug into the dark of the earth, the white bandages that he wound up his arms each morning staining from the coarse soil and his own sweat. His nails, what little could be seen of them, were limned with grit, and the fingers of his left hand were streaked red with scar tissue.

Lee blinked his eyes open and met Gaara’s. His attention stuttered over the cork, slowly rolling on the ground between them.

“Are you okay?” he asked, in between the strained breaths of his counting.

“Okay,” Gaara echoed him, numbly.

Gaara watched Lee do press-ups in silence through the rest of the night, ignoring Lee’s further attempts at conversation, until the sun started skating the horizon and Lee’s wrists finally gave out, tumbling him towards the campfire.

* * *

On the sixth night of Lee’s watch, their party made camp in the Land of Frost, under a crag of ice that formed a makeshift cave, hanging with icicles like viper teeth. They set their fire at the cave’s mouth--so as not to melt the icicles and put themselves at risk of being speared to death--but the winds off Haran Bay cut cold and spare across the space, and they spent more time in kindling and re-kindling it than benefiting from its warmth.

By midnight, they had abandoned the fire as a lost cause, and Lee alternated between shivering with cold and with exhaustion. His posture was losing some of its rigidity, alternately swaying to and fro with the gusts of wind. Most concerningly, he had abandoned training in favor of huddling beside Gaara on a shared rock, each wrapped tight in their blankets.

Gaara sniffed miserably; he _hated_ the cold, and it was only due to grow colder as they forged northward. He stared at the bleak cast of the night sky, and the full moon glared back at him balefully. His skin stung and itched with a tremulous anxiety. The only thing louder than the howl of the wind was the incessant whisper inside his head. Deep in his chest, he felt Shukaku stirring. He braced his hands on his knees and made to stand. Cold or no, watch or no, he needed to _move_.

He realized with a start that Lee was starting to list into his space, eyes hazy with sleep. Lee’s head hit Gaara’s shoulder with a gentle _thunk_ , and all of Gaara’s breath escaped him in a frantic hiss.

Lee’s face was warm against his shoulder, even through the blankets. The fringe of his hair fell down to sweep the shoulder of Gaara’s cloak, the _shh, shh, shh,_ of it scraping the fabric more piercing than the bite of cold against his bare face.

The proximity was overwhelming, but more than that, the trust it took, for someone to lower their guard enough to _fall asleep against Gaara_ , when even his own siblings refused to turn their backs on him as they slept, bedrolls always oriented to his position, was … Gaara gripped absently at his chest, where Sasuke Uchiha had once left a gaping, bloody wound. On his worst nights, Gaara could still smell the singed flesh there.

Of course, Gaara had touched Lee before. Returning to Konoha from that distant, bone-swept field, he had shouldered Lee’s body like a burden. But that had been out of necessity: Lee could barely stand on his own two feet, much less walk. And the sand had done most of the carrying for him.

 _You could kill him right now,_ whispered the demon that prowled Gaara’s mind. _You could finally, finally take your revenge. His throat is right there. Can’t you hear his beating heart?_

Lee hummed and smacked his lips. Shukaku _purred_.

Gaara grit his teeth.

 _You’re getting soft,_ he heard the demon hiss.

Gaara’s heart pounded his ribs like clawed fists on the bars of a rickety cage. _It would be so easy._ Gaara’s fingers clenched tighter, tighter on his knees. There was an audible _crunch_ as flecks of his sand armor broke away. The beast crooned, _Come on, let loose a little,_ and Gaara noticed that everything around them was smeared with a sandy haze. The gourd’s cork rolled in front of him like an accusation.

Gaara sucked in a thin breath. The moonlight crept through the icy overhang and pierced his eyes. He tore them away, and stared down at Lee instead. Cold blue light made a halo of his soft hair, and his face was slack and guileless. His hand reached out, idly groping for … _something_ , and then fisted in the front of Gaara’s cloak.

Gaara clenched his eyes shut and forced the sand back into his gourd. His heart beat like a timpani that drowned out even Shukaku’s riotous laughter.

“Huh, wha- ?”

Gaara felt more than saw Lee stirring against his shoulder. Of a moment, Lee sat bolt-upright. All the sand had been packed away, but Lee’s eyes were still wide and wary before he sprang into motion.

“Oh, Gaara-san!” Lee patted Gaara’s chest officiously, as if brushing off dust Gaara knew wasn’t there. “I’m terribly sorry. I must have let my tiredness get away from me!”

“It’s fine,” Gaara replied, and, before he could think too much of it, he reached his arm out and tugged until Lee’s head was back on his shoulder.

“B-but,” Lee stammered, “the watch- ”

“You need sleep,” Gaara insisted flatly. “I’ll keep watch.” Lee had slumped closer in his confusion, and now the warmth of his body ran all the way from Gaara’s shoulder to his wrist. The wind was still loud, but Shukaku had fallen silent.

“Oh,” Lee replied, “okay.”

His eyes stayed open the rest of the night, but he didn’t move his head from Gaara’s shoulder until morning.

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

  


After Lee’s failed week of insomnia, things returned seemingly to normal. A shaky camaraderie had begun to form between the two teams, fragile as the green shoots that peeked through the hoarfrost crunching under their feet. Tenten ran ahead of the group, comparing the tiny plants to her field guide and plucking them to eat later. Gaara watched as Temari inclined her head and muttered something in Tenten’s ear, which sent her scurrying and brought her back to the group with a cluster of edible berries clenched in one triumphant fist. 

That night, as they feasted on their foraged dessert, Temari cocked her chin, a wicked and satisfied grin on her face. 

“Nice work.” She nodded at Tenten. 

Kankuro looked up from his bowl in shock, mouth hanging open.

“Uh, yeah,” he was quick to correct himself. “Good lookin’ out.” 

Across the fire, Tenten beamed with pride. 

Gai paused mid-chew, still working on his second bowl of rice, and jabbed his chopsticks across the fire in Baki’s direction. Baki didn’t seem to like Gai much--in fact, the two of them argued much more than they agreed--but he tolerated Gai with his typical, stone-faced silence. 

“Your students are most impressive as well!” Gai boomed. Baki didn’t look up from his berries. “Temari has an impeccable command of the local flora, and young Kankuro, here- ”

“Hey!” Kankuro blurted. “Who’re you calling young, ya old- ”

Temari elbowed him hard in the side. “Shut up and take the compliment,” she hissed out of the corner of her mouth. 

“- has an excellent command of his poisons!” Gai continued, undeterred by the interruption. “And as for Gaara, uh- ”

Gaara watched him cautiously, hackles raised and his skin prickling with the familiar discomfort of being observed. 

“Well, um- ” Gai continued to stammer.

From his space at the far end of the log Team Gai was sharing, Neji rose to his feet in a single fluid gesture. His empty bowl clattered noisily against Tenten’s as he snatched hers from her hand and stacked them. 

“Hey, I wasn’t fin- !” she started to say, but Neji cut her off with a look colder than the frozen needles clustering on the trees around them. 

“I’ll clean up,” he announced, his voice tight and prim. 

Gai swallowed loudly, slapping his not-yet-empty-bowl into the stack in Neji’s outstretched hand. “Yes,” he cried, “excellent initiative! Thank you, Neji.” 

The praise sent Lee sprawling to his feet in turn, and he raced to the other side of the fire to collect the bowls from Gaara’s team as well. 

“I will race you!” Lee shouted, earning him a glare from Kankuro and a scowl from Temari, who raised her hand to shush him in a display she wouldn’t have dared against his teacher. “Whoever finishes cleaning their bowls last takes first watch!” 

Lee had already wrested the bowls from the other three’s grasps, but he hesitated in front of Gaara, who was just popping the last of his berries into his mouth. 

“Um, Gaara-kun,” Lee began, his hand canted towards Gaara, palm-up and supplicating, “may I please take your bowl?”

“Hurry up, Lee,” Neji called from the banks of the half-frozen stream they had camped near. “I’ve already got the water nearly heated.”

Gaara set his bowl gingerly at the top of Lee’s stack, and Lee dashed away. 

“ _Gaara-kun?_ ” Kankuro whispered, the moment Lee was out of earshot.

  


* * *

  


The first time it happened, Gaara didn’t even realize Lee was asleep. 

Lee had lost miserably in his dishwashing race, and had adopted his now-familiar position slouched against Gaara’s arm as they braved the first leg of the night watch together. The moon was creaking in its waning moorings, its light spread across the sky by a thin cover of wispy clouds, and the frosty woods around them were silver and sparkling beneath its purview. 

“Gaara, look out,” Lee mumbled, his face pressed to Gaara’s shoulder. 

Gaara went immediately rigid, the sand spiraling out from his gourd to survey the nearby tree cover. He barely registered that Lee had called him ‘Gaara’--just ‘Gaara’, not the ‘Gaara-san’ he typically favored, or the ‘Gaara-kun’ he had been cautiously exploring during their late night rambles--or that he had spoken so informally, a direct command. All senses on high alert and detecting nothing, he nudged Lee and spoke as softly as he could manage. 

“What is it?” Gaara whispered. “What do you see?” 

Lee smacked his lips, the sound wet and echoing in Gaara’s ear. 

“The turtles … ”

At this, Gaara finally turned from the dark spindles of the tree trunks to look at Lee’s face. It was then that he realized Lee’s eyes were still closed, his eyebrows drawn close and a furrow between them as his mouth worked silently. 

“What?” Gaara breathed.

Lee’s head nodded on his neck, and Gaara pushed it back upright with the tips of his fingers, loosing a mighty snore from him. 

“I tore up their contract,” Lee mumbled, “and now they’re _pissed_.”

Something curious tickled at the corner of Gaara’s mouth, a feeling both unfamiliar and strange. He bit his tongue in an attempt to contain it. If he searched his memory very carefully, he could almost place it … something he hadn’t felt since childhood. The feeling fizzed in his chest, and the corner of his mouth worked involuntarily, twitching into a half-smirk. He couldn’t say for sure, but it almost felt like laughter. 

Despite the lack of clear and present danger, Gaara stayed on edge all night, body riding high on adrenaline.

  


* * *

  


The thing that was fascinating about Lee, Gaara learned in short order, was how unfiltered he was in sleep. During the day, Lee clung tightly to a rigid formality, all bowed head and honorifics. In his sleep, however, he resembled more closely himself under the influence of the Drunken Fist style. Not just in the way he used informal endings and spoke with impolite directness, but he was … almost angry, in a way that he would never allow to be seen when the sun was shining and his teacher was looking on. 

“I’m gonna give that asshole a turtle,” Lee muttered through a scowl one night, drool from the corner of his mouth seeping through the blanket on Gaara’s shoulder to chill his skin. 

“A turtle.” 

“Yeah, a fuck-you tortoise.” 

He talked mostly nonsense: Gaara assumed whatever his unconscious mind was working through, though various chelonians featured surprisingly prominently. Sometimes Gaara couldn’t understand him at all, when he lapsed into the language Lee and his teammates spoke only amongst themselves, pitchy and tonal, sibilantly distinct from the shinobi common tongue. 

He moved his hands, too, in wide and sweeping gestures: sometimes batting at unseen enemies, other times clinging tightly to Gaara’s clothes. He never tried to get up and walk--fortunately, Gaara thought, because he didn’t think anyone could stop him if he did. Even in sleep, and even still in the end stages of recovery, Lee’s strength was immense and surprising. 

“ _Báifàn_ is just hair for curry,” he mumbled on another occasion, slipping into the common language mid-sentence. 

“I don’t understand,” Gaara told him. 

“You know- ” And here Lee’s hand snapped out to mime a razor shaving someone’s head “- a buzz cut.”

Gaara didn’t know, but it did make him smile, a secret shared between him and the moon. 

He took to sharing Lee’s more intelligible rambles with him when he woke, because Lee seemed to delight in it, and his laugh made something warm spark up Gaara’s breastbone. 

“Last night you started petting my face,” Gaara murmured one morning, as they each retrieved a skewer of fish from the campfire. 

The rivers on the border of Lightning Country were not quite yet frozen over, feeding off a warm current from the coast. This close to the Hidden Cloud Village, the use of chakra was forbidden, which left only raw strength and cunning when it came to looking for food. Though their packs were still heavy with food pills and spare water, Gai and Baki had announced at the beginning of the journey that they weren’t to waste rations until they had crossed into Snow Country, where winter would have left the ground barren. The hard press of foot travel was driving their group to exhaustion--Gaara especially, whose gourd and pack conspired to leave his muscles aching in a way the sand barrier could do nothing about--and left little time to hunt or fish. Fortunately, Tenten had a keen eye and a deft hand with a fishing spear. She could spot the flash of scales between river rocks from meters away, and often snatched a fish from the gelid water before Gaara even saw her move. 

Lee looked up from the pointed stick in his hand with an eyebrow raised in alarm. 

“When I asked what you were doing,” Gaara continued placidly, “you just said, ‘Shh, spiders on your face.’”

Lee grinned at that, but across the fire, Gai’s mouth dropped open with his chopsticks dangling from his lips. 

To Gaara’s right, Temari bristled. 

“You let him touch your _face?_ ” she barked. 

Lee’s lower lip jutted into a pout as he balled up his fists, and Gaara heard the telltale _crunch_ of his chopsticks shattering yet again. 

“I would never hurt a friend!” Lee shouted. “Even in my sleep!”

Temari stared at Gaara for a long moment. He focused his attention on picking a particularly stubborn rib bone from his fish, then sucked it clean of its flesh. 

“Yeah,” she muttered, “it’s not _you_ I’m worried about.”

  


* * *

  


That night, Gai took first watch. 

A storm was brewing north of their camp, clouds clustering low and ominous, blotting out the moon’s ascension. If it lingered, they would walk straight into it in a day or two. Already the wintry tendrils of the cold front were sneaking across the sallow surface of the watershed where they had made camp. Gaara rubbed his hands together, fingers stiff and numb, and held them out over the low campfire. 

There weren’t many trees this close to the river, but Gai had found the largest of them, a sturdy not-quite-evergreen. Its needles shed loose and brown to carpet the bank as he swung his knees over the lowest branch to do hanging sit-ups. The grunts of his effort masked the trickle of water beside them, slowing as the night grew colder. Gaara watched the river’s meandering as far as he could see it without the moon’s assistance. Ice crystals were forming along the reeds as the temperature dropped and the river eddied gently over cold, flat stones. 

At some undefined point, Gai ceased in his efforts and returned to the fire. In its flickering light, his sweaty face shone oleaginously, the lines of his countenance even more severe in shadow, his brows heavy and foreboding. He pushed his hair back from his forehead with the palm of his hand, sighing heavily, and looked somewhere over Gaara’s right shoulder. 

Gaara turned to see what it was Gai had spotted. Nothing was there but the sleeping forms of their teams, crystalline breaths hovering over the hunched shadows of their bedrolls like exhaled ghosts. 

Gaara turned back to the small fire and Gai’s scowling face, and watched as Gai’s expression slowly softened, his head tilted and considering. Gai scratched his chin as if in profound thought. There was a cautious openness to his expression as he began to speak.

“You saved Lee’s life,” he said, voice low and heavy with a meaning that Gaara couldn’t decipher. 

Gaara realized then that Gai meant to be looking at him. The fire was burning low, and the tight ball of its glow left a low radius of visibility around it, but Gaara’s night vision had always been excellent. However, if Gai couldn’t see him, that meant that Gai probably didn’t think Gaara could see _him_ , either. 

It was the first time Gai had spoken directly to him since their journey had begun, even if his words were directed to the empty air above Gaara’s shoulder. 

“Yes,” Gaara offered in return. 

Gai crossed his arms and leaned back, his posture relaxed. 

_You could smother him right now,_ hissed a voice that Gaara hadn’t heard in several days, _and be rid of that meddling interferer in an instant._

Gaara shook his head slowly. He wasn’t so sure. Despite the apparent trust in Gai’s position, there was something more there--something perched and ready to pounce at the first sign of danger. Gaara dug his fingers into his kneecaps, and the whispering voice slunk away to sulk somewhere deep in his ribcage. 

“That’s all,” Gai concluded, but he remained in that same curious pose, studying the space where he thought Gaara was, until Kankuro stretched awake for second watch.

  


* * *

  


“Lee!” Gai boomed the following day. It was nearing midday, and Gai and Lee were walking side-by-side on their hands, for reasons Gaara couldn’t fathom. 

Tenten and Temari had set out to scout ahead that morning, to forage and lay traps in the woods beyond. Neji had remained behind despite Tenten’s urgings, as if tethered to Lee’s other side, and upright despite his teacher’s exhortations. 

Gaara, Kankuro, and Baki brought up the rear, and Neji kept craning back to look at them, even though with his _kekkei genkai_ he could see through the back of his own head. It was a message, Gaara knew, as clear as if it had been written in blood on his own forehead: _You’re being watched._

“Yes, Gai-sensei!” Lee shouted in return. From the river bank, something _plopped_ into the water in alarm. 

“Man,” Kankuro muttered, low enough that only Gaara and Baki would be able to hear him, “I dunno how a serious guy like Neji puts up with those two bozos.”

“Both are formidable opponents,” Gaara replied just as lowly. 

Kankuro scoffed.

“Please, Bowlcut Junior barely survived his first run-in with you.”

“Gaara barely survived his first encounter with Lee, either,” Baki corrected, lips tight.

“He only survived his second because of- ” Gaara paused. “- his teacher.”

“It’s okay,” Kankuro whispered, “you can say ‘Bowlcut Senior’.”

Baki shot him a glare, and he ducked his head. 

“Sorry, jeez! Nobody has a sense of humor anymore.” 

Gaara had lost the thread of Gai and Lee’s shouted conversation amongst the hissed conversation, but he tuned back in just in time to see Lee flip to his feet with an exclamation and a salute.

“Thank you for your confidence, Gai-sensei! I would be honored to take the full night watch from now on!” 

As Lee bounded back to their group to share the change in plans, Gaara watched Neji turn to glare over his shoulder at them, caution warping his features.

  


* * *

  


That same night, they found the storm, and the storm found them. Wind whipped through the thin air, carrying peals of freezing rain, and sent the river into a frenzy. The group retreated into the woods, into a thicket of trees between two sloping barrows, in the hills that arced up into the mountain range that straddled Lightning Country. They set up camp where the canopy was heaviest and best protected from the elements. Even so, the branches of the evergreens bowed with the wind, and sleet cut through every gap in the tree cover to sting at exposed skin. 

It was long, spare hours before anyone in their party fell asleep. Keeping a fire lit without jutsu was an impossibility in such conditions, and so they heaped the last of the dry pine needles into a pile to guard against the chill of the earth, and slept with their bedrolls overtop of them, cloaks pulled tightly over their faces. 

As their companions drifted slowly into fitful slumber, Lee and Gaara braved the storm unobserved. 

Even with his cloak pulled over his head, the rain trailed its icy fingers down Gaara’s neck. The warmth of Lee’s arm against his was undetectable against the glacial air. A gust of wind swept through the camp and battered itself against Gaara’s body. He shuddered. 

“Here,” Lee said, and swept open his arm, exposing his flak vest and jumpsuit.

“You’ll die of hypothermia,” Gaara said.

“No, I meant … ” Lee’s mouth and brows crumpled, drawing all his features to the middle of his face. “We can share. That way, each of us gets two blankets and two cloaks instead of just one. And we can share body heat.” 

Gaara stared at the dark gap beneath Lee’s outstretched arm. 

_His brachial artery is right there,_ said a voice somehow both louder and quieter than the wind. _If you cut it, he would bleed out in a moment._

The wind howled, and Lee shivered, his arm still spread wide and expression pleading. 

Gaara ducked into that dark space, and Lee brought his blanket around them both. He rested his head atop Gaara’s head, and pulled the hood of his cloak up over them. He was right; it was warmer. Lee’s arm wrapped around the span of Gaara’s shoulder, keeping him close. Gaara could feel the pulse of his blood, calescent and alive, through the dual layers of their clothes. Despite the thrashing of the wind in the branches overhead, everything felt suddenly very still, and very quiet. 

In just a few minutes, Lee’s breath in Gaara’s hair had steadied into sleep. 

Not an hour later, Lee began to mumble. “Mm-nah, hmm, sparring partner.”

“Sparring partner?” Gaara had learned that simply repeating Lee’s own words back to him tended to elicit his more outrageous responses. 

“You’re my sparring partner,” Lee affirmed. His words were sloppy, and his lower lip caught on the crown of Gaara’s head. “You know, like fighting.”

“Like fighting,” Gaara echoed, and when Lee only hummed in response, he pressed on, “How?”

“Like this.” Lee’s hand snuck up from the depths of the blankets, and he pressed his palm to the ball of Gaara’s nose. “Boop!” 

Gaara’s lips started twitching out of his control. Something shook loose in his chest. Breath escaped his nose in a snort. 

“H-huh, huh, huh.” Someone was laughing. Gaara’s shoulders trembled. He realized with faint alarm that the person laughing was him. 

Lee stirred above him, and he rubbed his nose into Gaara’s hair. Gaara’s laughter stuttered to a stop, sure he had woken him. Lee’s long eyelashes fluttered against his scalp. 

“Lee,” he whispered, trying for an explanation, “do you know what you just did?” 

Lee just giggled, a high, hiccuping thing. 

“Sure,” he said, and then his hand came up to press Gaara’s nose again. “Boop!” 

The pitchy breath of Gaara’s laughter was lost to the wind.

  


* * *

  


On the coast of Gaikotsu Bay, they hired a boat to take them to the outermost of Snow Country’s islands. 

“Won’t go no further than that,” the old fisherman told them. “The water up there is treacherous. Be surprised if you can find any boats to take you through them islands. Hardly no people up there a’tall.” 

That was what they were counting on, so they paid the boatman’s fee and trundled in a weary line up the gangplank to the upper deck. 

Gai was a miserable sailor, and spent most of the first leg of their journey in the bowels of the ship, cursing and moaning, gripping his stomach. Lee followed him down to tend to him, and then Tenten later as well.

“Give him this,” Kankuro called to her, as she turned to descend the boat’s rickety stairs. 

She held out her palm and caught the satchel Kankuro tossed her underhand. 

“What is it?” she asked, scrutinizing the worn surface of the little bag. 

“Herbs an’ whatever,” he replied. “Have him chew ‘em--it’ll settle his stomach. But tell him don’t swallow, spit ‘em back out when he’s done.”

Tenten stared between the bag in her hand and the casual expression on Kankuro’s face. She seemed to think for a long moment before she smiled. It was the first positive expression Gaara had seen directed from her towards his brother.

“Thanks!” she called over her shoulder, and then she vanished below deck. 

“Jus’ needs to find his sea legs,” croaked the boatman, over Gaara’s shoulder. Gaara turned to look at his wizened, wind-scarred face. He had a dark, tidy beard and thin moustache, though they were rimy with frost, but his wrinkled head was bald. “Not like the rest of ya. Strong stock, aren’tcha? Used to the water?”

It was, in fact, the first time Gaara had ever been on a boat in his life. The lack of ground beneath his feet was disorienting. He could sense, at a great depth, the sandy floor of the sea far below them, but it was useless to him at that depth, and waterlogged besides. His whole body felt stretched hair-trigger thin, and he twitched with every jolt of the skiff over the waves. Neji and Temari both were staring at him with sharp eyes and sharper expressions, but the old man didn’t seem to sense the danger at all. 

He clapped his hand on Gaara’s shoulder, and the terror of that gesture skated straight up Gaara’s spine to lodge in the base of his skull. 

_Crush him,_ hissed the voice in his ears. _What could they do to stop you?_

“Skinny lad, aren’tcha?” said the old man, squeezing at the peak of Gaara’s shoulder. “They ain’t feedin’ ya enough at- uh, where’d ya say you were from again?”

“We didn’t,” Baki interjected, while Gaara wormed his way out from under the boatman’s grasp and hurried to the front of the ship. 

“That was an impressive display of restraint,” Neji muttered through pursed lips as Gaara passed. 

“I wouldn’t kill a civilian,” Gaara whispered back. “Or a comrade,” he added, unnecessarily. 

Neji’s pale eyes tracked from the shut door to the lower deck, then back to Gaara’s face. 

“No,” he murmured, and cocked his head, expression inscrutable. “You wouldn’t, would you?”

  


* * *

  


There was no need to keep watch out at sea, but Lee found Gaara on the prow of the boat late that night all the same.

“You should be asleep,” Gaara told him.

“I got lonely.” 

“There are seven other people below deck.” 

Lee just shrugged, and shouldered his way up next to Gaara, slotting his legs between the boat’s railings so both their limbs dangled over the spray. Gaara reached out his arm around Lee’s shoulder, so his cloak could cover them both, and Lee’s head nestled onto his shoulder. It was routine, now, this closeness: comforting and predictable. 

“I’m glad Gai-sensei is feeling better,” Lee said quietly, and Gaara felt the motion of Lee’s jaw against his shoulder. The sand below was still much too far away, and the muscles of his back ached from the weight of his gourd, wrapped in cloth to conceal its shape and nature, but Lee’s body heat grounded him. “I was worried.” 

The herbs seemed to have helped, and Gai had even shown his wan face at dinner, though he had taken nothing but water. 

“I’m grateful to your brother,” Lee continued. “We make a pretty good team, all of us together, don’t we?” 

Gaara didn’t know how to respond. His fingers dug against the skin of his knee as they fell into a easy, considering silence. Waves crashed rhythmically against the prow as the ship rocked, and an icy breeze guttered in the loose main sail. The air was freezing cold, but the heat of Lee’s skin burned warmer and brighter than any campfire. 

“I’ve got a cru-ush,” Lee mumbled, sing-song. 

Gaara froze. There was no way Lee could have _known_ -

A tiny, whuffling snore escaped Lee then, his exhale stirring the edge of Gaara’s cloak. 

“I’ve got a crussssh,” Lee repeated, his voice dropped to a hushed whisper. “But it’s a sssecret.”

Gaara relaxed fractionally. Of course. Lee was simply talking in his sleep again. A quirk of amusement skated the corner of his lips. 

“A crush?” he asked. A sour discomfort had started writhing in his belly. The disorientation of being at sea reawakening, perhaps. “Who?”

“Gaa-ara.” Lee’s voice had adopted that parabolic intonation again, curling up then down again. 

“Yes,” Gaara reminded him, “I’m here.”

“No, stupid,” Lee snapped, voice suddenly sharp. Gaara winced instinctively. “I’ve got a crush on Gaara.” 

All the blood in Gaara’s body ran cold. He gripped his knees so hard that a trail of sand crept from between the gourd’s cloth wrappings, grasped his wrist, and pulled his whole hand away. His mind raced. Every light, pithy response he had planned to toss back at the nonsense spilling from Lee’s lips turned to slush in his mouth. He wanted to jerk away, but there was nowhere to go, and Lee’s head on his shoulder burned, burned, _burned_. 

There was no way it was true, Gaara thought. His pulse screamed in his ears. His ribcage shuddered with the hammer of his heart. He noticed, for the first time that night, the sharp crescent of the moon overheard, hooked like a cruel smirk. Gaara was hardly even prepared for a friendship, still cultivating the foal-skin-fine fabric of a tremulous bond between them, and now, as he stared into the waves, the word _crush_ reiterating in his ears, he saw even that slim margin of acceptance crumble to ash. 

His heart was pounding so hard that his chest began to ache, and he wrested his hand from the grip of his sand to clutch at the place where his heart should have been. 

_He hurt you,_ whispered the demon, in an eerie echo of Lee’s sing-song tones. _You have to kill him. If you kill him, the pain will go away._

Lee snuffled again, then rubbed his nose against Gaara’s shoulder. The motion seared into Gaara’s skin. 

It was ridiculous. Gaara smoothed the wrinkles of his shirt, and returned his hand to his knee. Lee said all sorts of improbable things in his sleep. He hardly ever talked sense. This declaration was equally as impossible as the time Lee had told him that a rogue ninja had stolen his toes. It was just … psychobabble. Half semiconscious thought and half bizarre dream ramblings. 

Gaara listened to the steadiness of Lee’s breath and forced his to slow to match. He looked away from his clenched hands, up to the moon, and its reflection on the ocean. The moon grinned wickedly back. 

When Lee mumbled himself awake hours later, and stood to slump back below deck to rest properly, Gaara didn’t even tell him ‘goodnight’.

  


* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully it was clear from context, but _báifàn_ is Mandarin for "rice" (at least, according to Google Translate! Please correct me if I'm wrong!!). I've always really liked the headcanon that Gai can speak Chinese, and I thought it would make sense for him to teach it to his team. Since nobody else seems to speak it, it would be a cool advantage for Team Gai to have access to a language only they can speak, so they can communicate secretly even if they were being overheard.


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

  


The boat stopped before the sun rose, and they debarked in the blue-white glow of the boreal pre-dawn onto a tiny island. The ground was little more than bare ice and stone. A hazy mist hung over the ground, but the island was so small that from the coast they stood on, they could see clear to the black lurching of the sea on the other side. 

“Hope ya find what yer lookin’ for,” the old man told Gaara, as they descended from the ship’s deck. In front of him, Gai collapsed to the ground on both knees and kissed the earth. “Whatever it is.”

The mission objective stood clear in the forefront of Gaara’s mind, but he wasn’t so sure what he was looking for anymore, either. 

Free of the borders of Lightning Country, they were finally permitted to use chakra again. The relief on Gaara’s shoulders alone was immense, and he rolled them as they began to walk. 

Beside him, Kankuro flicked out a few chakra threads from his fingers to snare clumps of ice up into a loose-packed snowball, just for the sheer joy of it. With a glint in his eye, he whipped the thing at the back of Neji’s head, who batted it out of the air without so much as blinking an eye. 

Kankuro was grumbling to himself about ‘prissy spoilsports’ when a ball of slush hit him square in the chest. He looked up in shock to find Tenten fanning her fingers at him, her other hand over her giggling mouth. 

From that moment, the fight was on. 

Kankuro snatched up as many icy projectiles as he could hold among his chakra threads, and slung them at Team Gai in a barrage. 

Neji spun out like a top to slap them each to the ground. Behind his one-man defensive wall, Tenten unrolled a scroll, and now Lee darted to and fro, alternately lobbing snowballs back at the Suna team and kicking up clouds of frost as a distraction. 

Temari unhitched her fan from her back and swept it out in an arc; a wave of loose snow collided with Team Gai like the front side of a blizzard. Just as the snow cleared from their eyes, Gaara looked up to find Tenten leaping above their heads, scroll unfurled in her arms, to deposit a veritable downpour of snowballs. 

Gaara was only saved from their icy collision by his sand arcing over his head. Temari’s fan sheltered her, but Kankuro wasn’t so lucky. He stared upwards for a moment, blinking clumps of snow from his eyelashes, looking like a half-melted snowman. 

With a guttural scream, he gathered up as many of the half-disintegrated snowballs as his arms could carry and charged across the plain, barrelling straight into Neji’s body. They hit the ground in a heap, and for a moment all Gaara could see was a tussle of limbs and the sharp jabs of Neji’s outstretched fingers. 

“Lee!” Neji shouted. “Now!” 

Kankuro leapt to his feet, but both of his arms were hanging limp at his sides, chakra points disabled. Lee somersaulted up with the biggest snowball Gaara had ever seen and nailed Kankuro straight in the face. Kankuro went down struggling onto Neji’s still-prone body, and Lee landed atop the both of them with a shriek. In an instant, Tenten had dogpiled onto them as well, her scroll trailing like a victory banner behind her and still shedding loose snowballs. Even Temari crossed to their group at a slow march and, while she didn’t join the shouting mass of mismatched limbs and soggy cloaks, she did stand over them with a quirk of amusement on her lips, looking for all the world like the most put-upon big sister in the Five Great Shinobi Nations. Even Gai and Baki, who had refrained from joining in the shenanigans, stood nearby them, radiating their own brands of joy: Gai with a beaming grin that caught the sunrise’s pale light, and Baki with a smirk on the visible half of his face. 

Gaara remained where he was, watching them. There was an immense sense of distance within him, a gaping, open blankness that he couldn’t place. It felt like the moon’s dark penumbra, the shadowed hollow of the sky where no stars shone. Everything felt liminal: his siblings and their companions a far-off, chiaroscuro sketch washed in the soft purples of dawn. His hand reached out, absently, and closed around cold and empty air. 

“Pipsqueak!” Kankuro squealed from under the pile of Team Gai’s thrashing limbs, and Gaara jolted at the nickname. “Lend me a hand, will ya? These guys are killin’ me!” 

Gaara stared at them for a long moment, his mind churning over nothing. Then, very slowly, very carefully, he stooped to the ground and gathered a handful of snow. The tangle of bodies on the ground fell silent then, boisterous laughter fading to nervous giggles as he weighed the ball of snow in his hand, once, twice. 

Then he lobbed it, overhand, towards the group.

It landed with a wet _splat_ almost a meter shy of them. 

For a second, everyone was very still, as if waiting for his reaction. Gaara looked down at the evidence of his failure, then back to the eyes watching him. 

Temari cleared her throat. “Hey,” she said, and her voice was rough in a way Gaara had rarely heard it before--only after she had finished making her flower arrangements in the kitchen, or when she chopped too many chilis and her eyes ran with tears, “come a little closer.”

Gaara stepped forward cautiously. The few meters between himself and the rest of the group seemed as vast and unfathomable as the sea they’d crossed to arrive there. When his boots finally crunched into the frost at Temari’s side, she smiled at him gently, creases below her eyes. 

He didn’t need to be told what to do, this time. At her nod, he scooped up another handful of snow. The thick leather of his gloves made his hands clumsy, but he packed it into a passable sloppy oblong. 

“C’mon,” Kankuro urged him, his legs still pinned under Tenten’s body and his arms laying useless against the cold ground. “I’m dyin’ here.” 

Gaara took aim with careful deliberation, and hit Kankuro square in the forehead protector with the snowball.

“Traitor!” Kankuro howled dramatically. He fell back to the ground with his hood askew, but there was a broad grin on his painted face. 

Lee took advantage of Kankuro’s distraction at his own brother’s betrayal to yank his hood down over his face, just in time for Tenten to flip him into a pile of slush. It was completely childish, utterly unbefitting of a group of elite shinobi, but Gaara couldn’t stop the ghost of a smile from rising to his lips. 

“Hey Gaara,” Temari whispered, as he stood watching their antics, “think fast.”

Then, before he could respond or even turn to look at her, she pulled out the collar of his cloak and dropped a tiny snowball down the back of his neck. 

The ice left a wet trail down his sand armor that penetrated straight to the skin. Goosebumps raced up his spine and he stiffened, eyes going wide. At first, he had no idea how to react.

From the ground, Kankuro raised a hand, and the whole group fell still and silent. His mouth dropped into a worried frown. 

“Um- ” Temari raised her hands and took a half-step back from him. “- sorry, I thought- But obviously it’s too soon- ”

“Huh, h-huh, huh.” The sound was familiar to Gaara now, though he could see the confusion on his siblings’ faces. His shoulders shook and he grabbed his stomach. “H-huh, huh, huh.” 

“Is he okay?” he heard Tenten whisper. 

“I think he’s- ”

“Gaara-kun!” Lee shouted, and when Gaara looked up, there were tears in Lee’s eyes. “What a brave and beautiful expression of emotion!” 

Then Lee threw his head back and joined in the laughter as well. 

“Holy shit,” Kankuro breathed. “He’s really laughing.” A goofy grin split his face, and a chuckle started rumbling up from his chest. 

“What?” Temari’s eyes were still scanning Gaara’s face, but when she found no evidence of pain or anger there, her lips cracked into a smile in turn.

As Tenten and Gai’s laughter joined them, Kankuro’s giggles turned into full-on guffaws, slapping his knees and gasping out of breath. In a few moments, Temari too was doubled over, cackling like mad. 

The sun had fully risen by the time they all had caught their breath.

  


* * *

  


They passed the day above and between the islands off Snow Country’s coast. Travel was quicker now, augmented with chakra, and Gaara was grateful to feel useful again. Physical fitness and stamina had never been of particular concern to him prior to this trip, always with the demon’s immense chakra to draw upon, and he resented in some small part his younger self for not realizing that strength training had at least _some_ importance. 

When it came time to cross the straits between the islands, almost everyone simply walked across the water. Excepting, of course, Lee, who had only enough chakra control to travel a few short steps over the dark and choppy waves. Gaara lifted him, then, on the same platforms of sand that he used to ferry himself to the next spot of dry land. 

“Thank you very much!” Lee called, as the wind shrieked past their faces. “Neji normally helps me, but I have to say I much prefer flying over having to guess where he’s stabilized the water!”

Gaara couldn’t bring himself to respond. There had been something warm there, earlier--warm like Lee’s smile, warm like Lee’s head on his shoulder, warm like Lee’s breath in his hair when he mumbled nonsense in his sleep--but now all that Gaara felt was cold. The frore of the breeze scraped him raw and empty, so he simply turned his head forward, and urged his sand onward, faster. 

They made camp on one of the inner islands, more ice floe than landmass, just a few miles from the coast of Snow. Tenten worked some clever jutsu and lit a fire on a reinforced scroll, so the heat wouldn’t burn right through the ice and send them plummeting into the sea below. 

Gaara’s body was teeming with exhaustion, and despite two days’ reprieve from carrying the gourd, all the muscles in his back still ached. His face hurt, too, skin wind-scratched and muscles sore from novel exertion. Overhead, the moon was nothing but a sliver. 

He was crouching by the fire, willing his mind into blank meditation, when Lee joined him for the night’s watch. 

Lee shuffled close, but Gaara drew his blankets tight around his own shoulders and turned his face away. Something whispered in his ear, but it was too quiet to understand. 

“Gaara-kun,” Lee said softly, “are you all right?” 

Gaara pulled his cloak’s hood lower over his face, breathing in the smell of smoke. Was he all right? How could he possibly be all right? 

“If anyone--especially me!--upset you earlier, I hope you know we didn’t mean it. Snowball fights are meant to be in good fun… Nobody was actually mad. Everybody really cares about you a lot! And showing affection with the youthful exuberance of one’s body is part of that!” 

A tight knot of panic gripped the base of Gaara’s throat. His fingers went tense on his knees. 

“I understand that could be overwhelming, at first, but the best way to get used to something is to jump in with both feet!” 

Lee would probably say the same to someone who had just been burned by a forest fire. He would probably still say it even if Gaara picked him up right now and dumped him into the churning water nearby. Gaara’s teeth started working at the inside of his lower lip. 

The water lapped at the edge of the ice, guided by the breeze, and Gaara watched its rhythm, fluttering like the pulse of blood under the skin of a human’s throat. He shivered.

“Are you cold?” Lee extended his arm in offer. “You can come over here if you like!”

Gaara’s head swiveled on his neck to stare at him, blank and unblinking. Lee’s arms were spread wide, his posture open, a hopeful smile on his face. But as Gaara watched, his smile flagged into doubt. A concerned furrow creased the space between his eyebrows. Slowly, Lee’s hands dropped back to his side. 

“Okay,” he said, more to himself than to Gaara, nodding and straightening his posture. He turned from Gaara then, and faced the fire, a judicious several inches between Gaara’s hunched form and the firm muscle of Lee’s arm. 

After several long, silent minutes, Lee stood with a rush of his cloak. 

“I think I will do some sit-ups,” he announced, though Gaara had no idea why Lee thought he would care. 

As Lee began to count, Gaara settled back on his haunches. He closed his eyes, and took a deep breath of bitter, ash-scented air. The whispering remained, an undercurrent to his own thoughts, but he attempted to clear his mind. The sound of Lee’s counting faded to a low, steady background noise. Everything harmonized: the slap of waves against the shore, the tenor of Lee’s breathy counts, the susurrus of the demon’s voice in Gaara’s head. He let himself drift, buoyed by it, and slowly he felt his strength surging back up within him. 

When Gaara blinked his eyes open to the glassy sheen of sunrise, he found Lee watching him. His hair hung lank on his sweat-stained face, and his lips were drawn into a small, tight frown. 

As Lee reached the apex of his many-thousandth sit-up, Gaara realized Lee hadn’t slept at all.

  


* * *

  


When they arrived, the base was empty. 

There was nothing there. Nothing but sheer cinderblock walls, nothing but long rows of shattered glass tanks lined with the sticky remnants of some unidentifiable fluid, nothing but metal shackles bolted to the wall of an underground room. Even the wiring had been torn out; whoever had left the place behind had plenty of time to pack up and leave. The whole building stank of death and decay, and Shukaku hissed over the scent of blood. 

Temari swabbed the inside of a few of the tanks and collected the soiled cotton into a series of vials in her hip pouch, but the expression on her face was not optimistic. Gai insisted on doing a second fruitless sweep of the building, just in case something had been missed. Inspired by his teacher, Lee insisted on yet a third foray into the bowels of the base, but he too came up empty-handed. 

“Well, that was a waste of two months of my life,” Kankuro said, as they began the slow trek back to Suna. He threw his arms behind his head and sighed. 

Gaara walked beside him. Staring at the span of Lee’s back in front of him, his shoulders squared and straight, his left leg no longer limping; and the perimeter afforded around him as Neji and Tenten didn’t flank him quite as closely, Gaara couldn’t bring himself to agree. 

Their party was agitated as they crossed the bleak plains of Snow Country, simmering with unspent tension and spoiling for a fight. As they crossed a particularly slick patch of earth, Tenten lost her footing and stumbled into Neji.

“Watch where you’re going!” he snapped, grabbing her by the upper arm to jerk her upright.

“Don’t yell at me!” she shouted back, wrenching her arm from his grip. She rubbed the offended limb and scowled, muttering, “That’s gonna bruise, jackass.” 

“Why don’t we take a day,” Gai suggested, “and burn off some steam? A full day devoted to training and sparring! Truly embracing the springtime of our youth!” 

“That wasn’t part of the mission brief,” Baki reminded him. “We’re shinobi. We follow orders.”

Gai cocked his head and rested a considering finger on his bottom lip. 

“Maybe so,” he said, “but- ” Here he extended his index finger as if he had just landed on some incredible counterpoint. “- a snowball fight wasn’t part of the mission brief either.”

The visible half of Baki’s face went blank and inscrutable. 

“Gai,” he said flatly, after a moment. “A word? Over here?”

The ground was flat and formless, the only plantlife patches of grey-green lichen that made tiny ridges of color in the permafrost. This left no place for Gai and Baki to conceal their heated conversation, particularly with six eager students all agitating to watch the argument unfold. Though his and Gai’s backs both were turned to the rest of the group, Neji quietly activated his Byakugan and began conveying the conversation in hand signals to the rest of his team. Gaara pressed his index and middle fingers over his eye and summoned up his Third Eye jutsu to observe. 

“The _snowball fight_ ,” Baki hissed between clenched teeth, “lasted less than fifteen minutes.” 

“Indeed, but that was before the failure of the mission!” Gai retorted. 

“That should have been more than enough of a _break_ ,” Baki spat the word like a curse, “for the lot of them. What if they were on a mission without you? Do you think another squad leader would let them … dilly-dally like this? They’re soldiers.”

Gai’s thick eyebrows drew down. “You aren’t wrong,” he said slowly, “but they are also children. And they aren’t at their best right now. If we were attacked at this moment, do you think they would succeed? Do you think they could work together like this?” 

Baki cut his eyes over Gai’s shoulders to see the rest of the group staring. The others, sans Gaara, all quickly turned and pretended to be looking at the sky or ground. The veins bulging around Neji’s eyes faded from the surface of his skin. Gaara slowly dropped his hand, and the Third Eye hastened back to his gourd. 

“Split off into pairs,” Baki called, gesturing to the empty space behind him. “Time for sparring practice.” Then he turned back to Gai and muttered, loud enough for all of them to hear, “No more than half a day.” 

Gai clapped him on the shoulder and gave a booming laugh. 

“I wouldn’t dream of asking for more!” 

Gaara tried to catch Lee’s gaze, ready for a rematch, but Lee sped past him with a _whoop_ of joy, arms waving. 

“Neji!” he shouted. “I’ll definitely beat you this time!” 

“You won’t,” Neji replied sedately, but squared off to face him all the same. 

Tenten was already beckoning Temari over to her, which left Kankuro as Gaara’s only option for an opponent. 

They settled into formation a few paces away from the others. Kankuro shook his hands out, and his chakra threads curled lazily on the edges of Gaara’s vision. 

“Begin!” Gai yelled.

Black Ant cratered to the ground between them with a shower of snow. Kankuro dodged right as the puppet went left, and in a moment he was within Gaara’s personal space. The sand drew a loose circle around Gaara’s feet. Neither of them were well-suited for a close quarters match; Kankuro was trying to throw him off his rhythm. 

It was not the first time they had sparred since Gaara had come under Baki’s tutelage, but it was the first time they had done so under such freewheeling, unsupervised conditions. Generally speaking, the only time Gaara even felt comfortable even mocking a strike at his siblings was in carefully controlled, pre-fabricated arrangements: such as the practice of a formulaic _kata_ , or in the close confines of Suna’s granite arena, where his access to sand was limited, and Baki and Temari both kept close eyes on the proceedings. The undisciplined nature of the fight left Gaara feeling simultaneously uncertain and not a small amount afraid, but at least a few nights’ dedicated meditation had left his mind blessedly silent and clear. 

Black Ant feinted a jab at his right side, its many legs skittering across the hard earth. A wave of sand pushed it back, and Kankuro took advantage of Gaara’s focus to cut in from the left. 

“So,” he said conversationally, as he traded rapid blows with the sand, “Green Bean finally got on your last nerve, huh?” 

“Green- ?” Gaara cut himself off as the sand grabbed one of Kankuro’s ankles and tried to drag him to the ground. Kankuro’s shape shimmered, and suddenly Black Ant’s wide, rolling eyes were staring back at him. Its open mouth chattered in a mockery of a laugh. Gaara turned to find Kankuro coming at him from the other side. “Do you mean _Lee?”_

Kankuro grinned and took a swipe at the sand with a blade in his hand. As he made contact with it, the sand went ochre and started flaking away. Gaara cocked an eyebrow. Poison, and a novel one at that. 

“Yeah, you want I should- ?” Kankuro made a gesture with his chakra strings in his free hand, a garotte closing around a throat. 

“If I wanted him dead,” Gaara said, aiming the sand at Kankuro’s feet in a series of spikes, forcing him to jump back, “I would have done it myself.”

“Are you sure?” said a voice from behind his ear. Black Ant’s carapace cracked open, and Kankuro leapt from within, senbon between his spread fingers. “Because it kinda seems like you’re sweet on him.” 

Gaara raised a hand, and the sand slapped the senbon up out of Kankuro’s hand. Kankuro ducked so they wouldn’t hit his face, eyes clenched shut, and Gaara took the moment to grab the back of his cloak with a fist of sand. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“That’s a sha- Ouch! - shame,” Kankuro continued, wresting himself from the sand’s grasp and lurching upright. “‘Cause he keeps lookin’ at you with those big goo-goo eyes. Hell, the kid’s practically in love with you.” 

_Love._ The notion was painful. Impossible. 

Gaara froze, and the sand froze with him. Kankuro cracked its shield with one of his poison senbon and had the needle a centimeter from Gaara’s face in an instant.

Gaara's ears were ringing faintly. Light glinted off the senbon and stung his eyes. His whole body felt icy and numb, motionless. 

“Holy crap!” Kankuro yelled, and punched a fist into the air. “I did it! I finally did it! Temari, look!” 

“I’m a little busy at the moment,” Temari called back through gritted teeth. Across the field, the ground around her was studded with weapons, and Tenten was readying to slap her palm down on another scroll. 

“I beat Gaara!” 

“You _what?!_ ” Her lapse in focus was enough for Tenten to get a kunai under her chin. 

“My point!” Tenten crowed. 

Temari swatted the kunai down without looking and stalked across the field. Gaara still hadn’t moved from where he stood, stock-still. 

“Are you okay?” she asked him quietly, giving him a generous berth of space. 

A few meters away, Lee was being battered to the ground by Neji’s pointed fingers. He grunted and staggered back to his feet. His left leg was dragging behind him as he lurched back into starting position. 

“Again!” Lee’s voice was loud even across the expanse. Gaara’s ears ached with it. The ringing grew louder. 

“I’ve already beaten you five times,” Neji replied tartly. 

“Best eleven out of twenty-one, then!” 

“Hey.” Temari’s face swam into Gaara’s field of vision, cutting off his line of sight to Lee. The air went quiet. “Let’s take a break. We haven’t had lunch yet; you must be hungry.” 

“No.” Gaara’s voice sounded as if it was coming from a great distance. His throat felt scratchy and unused. 

While he wasn’t paying attention, Baki had appeared from somewhere, and now his lone, dark eyebrow raised as he peered at Gaara from over Temari’s shoulder. 

“Baki-sensei,” she murmured over her shoulder, “we’re taking a break.” 

“Get him some water,” was the only thing Baki said in response. He stepped back and let her lead Gaara to the nearest bare patch of rock. Kankuro pressed a canteen into his numb hands. Gaara drank mechanically, but he hardly tasted it, barely felt the chill of it work down his throat. A mouthful splashed out onto his chin and shirt from between his unfeeling lips, but he couldn’t bring himself to regret the waste. 

“What the _hell_ did you say to him?” Temari was whispering, as if Gaara weren’t sitting right there. In the shadow between his siblings’ cloak hems he saw Lee hit the ground again. 

“I didn’t say shit, man! I was just talkin’ about Lee’s big, fat crush, an’- ”

Temari’s nostrils flared. She grabbed Kankuro by the ear and dragged him away, he hollering in protest. As she launched into her silent threat display in Gaara’s periphery, two booted feet appeared before him. 

He looked up to find Lee standing over him. His cloak was stained with slushy mud, and a shining purple bruise was blooming under one eye. Lee stooped down to match Gaara’s seated height. 

“Are you feeling tired?” he asked. When Gaara didn’t respond, he tilted his head and blinked owlishly. “Um, or- what did you call it? Does your … back hurt? Do you want to set your gourd down?” 

Lee’s nearness was stifling. It was all Gaara could do to grate out a, “No.” His fingers tightened on the gourd’s harness, as if Lee might rip it away from him. 

“Okay,” Lee said, and dropped into a crouch mere inches away. “Oh! You’ve got a bit of water on your shirt, let me- ”

A rope of sand shot from the gourd and grabbed Lee’s outstretched hand like a vice. Gaara’s eyes widened fractionally. Lee glanced from his hand to Gaara’s face. 

“Gaara-kun,” he said, very slowly, his voice gentle as old, well-worn cloth, “please let go. You’re hurting me.” Although the smile hadn’t dropped from Lee’s face, his voice was tight with barely concealed panic. 

Gaara’s breath returned to him in a gasp. He jerked away and stumbled to his feet. 

“Gaara-kun, wait- !” 

He staggered backwards from Lee’s hand, still reaching towards him. He turned and began to walk quickly, directionless. A few moments later, he realized two sets of familiar footsteps were flanking him. 

“Why are you following me?” he muttered.

Temari and Kankuro fell into step on either side of him. Kankuro’s hands were white-knuckled on the straps that secured his puppet to his back.

“Not following,” he corrected, and his voice was as serious as Gaara had ever heard it, purged of his normal joking, jovial nature. “Just watchin’ your back.”

Gaara almost bristled at that. He didn’t need anyone to watch his back. He could sense every living thing around him with the slightest infusion of chakra into the soil; he could see three-hundred-and-sixty degrees with his Third Eye jutsu; and even if he missed all prior warnings, his sand would protect him like an impermeable shield. He didn’t _need_ them at all. 

His siblings footsteps crunched in the snow beside him, keeping pace with his every step, their chakra signatures twin pulses of comfort on either side. He didn’t need their help, Gaara thought, but maybe, just maybe, he _wanted_ it.

  


* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will I ever write something that doesn't completely get away from me? Signs point to no. There's a fourth (and final) chapter of this coming, hopefully this weekend.
> 
> By the way, I'm taking prompts on [my Tumblr](https://ghoste-catte.tumblr.com/post/190001356247/happy-new-year-smut-requests-open). Hit me up if you want something written for you.


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

  


They stayed inches apart, now, on night watch. Lee didn’t touch Gaara, and Gaara wouldn’t--couldn’t--touch him, the sand snapping at Lee’s skin like a feral dog whenever he so much as breathed too close. Gai, who was nominally responsible for scheduling the watch, seemed not to have noticed the new caution between them--or, if he had noticed, had adopted Lee’s same approach to repairing it, which was to pretend nothing was wrong and carry on as usual. Gaara wasn’t sure which was more likely; he had seen a keen glint in Gai’s gaze too many times to fall solidly on either side. 

So they sat, side-by-side, in the still and the quiet of the night, with only the sound of the guttering fire and Gai’s snores to keep them company. The full of the winter was upon them as the solstice approached. Gaara was so much colder now, colder than he remembered being before he had known the warmth of Lee’s arm around his shoulder. He huddled closer to the fire, so close that the smoke stung his eyes. Lee seemed altogether less affected by the distance; he was still quick to fall asleep sitting up. 

After the night on the boat, Lee’s sleep talk had developed a near-singular fixation. 

“I wanna kiss him,” he mumbled one night as they camped on the border of Lightning, his head nodding into his own chest. 

Gaara’s heart stuttered. He had still hoped, perhaps fool-heartedly, that Lee’s previous comment had been nothing more than a fluke, and his brother simply reading into things that weren’t there. 

“Who?” he asked, against his better judgment. There were cracks in the sand armor where his fingernails were digging in. 

“Gaara,” Lee replied. He smiled sweetly. He had a dimple on one cheek, and the firelight dipped into that space and painted it gold. Gaara wondered who it was Lee’s sleeping brain thought he was talking to. “But he’s too … prickly.”

“Prickly,” Gaara repeated. Even to his own ears, his voice sounded dead. Defeated. 

“From the sa-and. Like a cactus.” Lee spread his arms out in an arc. “It all makes sense!” His fist slammed sloppily into his outstretched hand, the _slap_ of skin-on-skin resounding. On the other side of the fire, Tenten stirred and rolled over in her bedroll. 

“Shh,” Gaara prompted. Lee’s hands fell back slack to his lap. 

“That’s the conspiracy,” Lee whispered. “But I’m gonna solve it. I just need a couple things.” 

“Such as?”

Lee mumbled something unintelligible, then snorted. “And a terrapin,” he added, after a long string of meandering, disconnected syllables. “Can’t forget the terrapin.”

  


* * *

  


As they crossed further into the hills of Lightning Country, Gaara found himself avoiding Lee more and more. By daylight, it was easy enough to skirt around him--to pretend he was engaged in one-sided conversation with his sister or brother, or to volunteer to scout ahead with his Third Eye (which he implied required much more concentration than it did), or to offer to bring up the rear in defense. But by night, Lee’s presence was unavoidable, and however far Gaara sat from him, however single-syllabic or grunted his responses, Lee never seemed to give up. 

There had been something there, once, a kindling spark now dwindled down to a single ember. But Lee seemed determined to stoke it back into a raging fire. 

Lee trained most nights, often until he fell asleep mid-count. Even preoccupied, Gaara felt Lee’s eyes on him, heavy with curiosity and concern. His sand shield was the ultimate defense, but under Lee’s piercing gaze, it felt as brittle and broken as it had when Kankuro had dissolved it with his poisons. 

Lee was contorted into a ridiculous stretch, curled like a brushstroke with his ankles up by his ears and his face pressed close to the ground when he mumbled, “Hey, wherezza tea house?”

They had passed the inn, nestled deep within the mountain pass, on their way to Snow Country. There had been no time to stop, then. Now, despite their dalliances with snowball fights and training matches, they were a day ahead of schedule, and Gai and Baki had compared their wallets and declared they had enough of a buffer to spend a single night under the inn’s roof. The whole group of them had been traveling at an even faster clip since the decision had been made, eager for a single night indoors and away from the stinging winds of Lighting Country’s midwinter. 

Gaara scratched a rough approximation of the map he had memorized into the frozen dirt with a stick. “According to the map, about three days’ travel from here.” He doubted Lee would remember this conversation in the morning, and he would probably ask again over breakfast, but it felt wrong to lie to him, even in his sleep. 

“Good,” Lee muttered darkly. “‘Cause I got plans.”

Gaara was slightly worried Lee would end up with dirt in his mouth, and that would be difficult to explain when he awoke. 

“Plans?” Gaara echoed. 

“Hell yes,” Lee averred. As many times as he had listened to Lee’s nighttime rambles, Gaara still wasn’t used to hearing him curse. Lee in sleep was a far cry from the boy who clapped his hands over his ears in shock when Kankuro declared something to be ‘bullshit’. 

“What are they?”

“I’m gonna kick its ass.” Lee’s hands were moving now, mocking out the staged actions of some fight only he could see. His body swayed, but by some miracle he didn’t lose balance. 

“The inn?”

“Yeah.” Lee’s legs pinwheeled in the air. “And the roof, _and_ the shingles.”

Gaara squinted to recollect the form of the building from their earlier travels. His memory was precise, near photographic in its accuracy. Buildings in Lightning tended towards stone roofs, thick and non-conductive, protected from the country’s naturally abundant storms. The tea house had been built into the side of the mountain. 

“I don’t think the inn has shingles,” Gaara said finally. 

Lee smiled agreeably, and his lip dragged definitively through the soil. “Just the roof, then.”

  


* * *

  


They arrived at the inn on Christmas Eve. 

It was exactly as Gaara remembered it: the wooden face of the inn carved into the base of the mountain, its doors and windows rounded and charming, almost pastoral, its awning heavy with trailing evergreen. And of course, not a shingle in sight. 

It was early evening when they arrived, and the long nights of winter meant the sun had already begun to set behind the snow-heavy clouds. The inn was lit up from within with a cozy glow of gold-orange light. Glass lanterns buzzing with electricity were strung along the stone bollards that lined the path. 

"Isn't it romantic?" Lee exhaled the words around a mouthful of crystalline fog. He clasped his hands in front of him, color high on his ruddy, wind-bitten cheeks. 

Tenten stomped slush off her boots and rubbed her hands together. "It'll be _romantic_ when I can get inside and get in front of a fire."

Gaara turned to Kankuro, who was walking at his side. "Romantic?" he muttered.

Despite his efforts to keep his voice low, Lee overheard the question and rushed back to join them. 

"Yes, of course!" 

Gaara looked warily at the snow drifts suspended on the mountain overhead. The area wasn't on avalanche precautions, but enough excitement from Lee and Gai could easily change that. 

"Because it's a couple's holiday, you know!"

At Gaara's blank-faced non-response, Lee thrust out his hands and fanned them. "Like the song?" He started up a jazzy little two-step on the wet cobblestones. "My boyfriend is Santa Cla-aus," he hummed a few lines from some apparently popular song. His singing voice was dreadful. 

Gaara continued to stare, and Lee trailed off into silence. 

"No?" he asked.

Gaara shook his head.

"We don't waste our time on braindead stuff like that in Suna," Temari drawled from her position at the rear of the group. 

The corners of Lee's mouth drew down into a frown. "How sad." He clutched his hands to his chest, looking heartbroken. 

"Lee, you are truly an idealist!" Gai thundered. He approached and slung his arm around Lee's shoulder, steering him towards the entrance to the inn. "I admit I had not considered the poetic implications of traveling on such a holiday; however, what better way to celebrate than to create new traditions with our most heartfelt friends and companions?"

Just as he took a massive breath, no doubt gearing up to continue expounding on his student’s virtues (and almost certainly planning to pepper the speech with some foolish, half-cocked proverbs), the inn's door was thrown wide. In its mouth stood the hunched form of a tiny old lady, a silk nightcap already on her head. 

"Are you coming in or not?" she hollered, and her voice was like the crunch of gravel overlain with the crack of thunder. "You'll bring the whole mountain down shouting like that."

Gai ducked his head and hurried to the entrance, his students falling into line behind him like chastened ducklings. He seized the old woman's hand and began shaking it, praising the building’s architecture and the beauty of the landscape around it. She narrowed her eyes at him but appeared suitably placated, because she stepped back, and they vanished into that warm, yellow light. 

Gaara blew into his gloved palms. A snowflake caught in the back of his hair and quickly melted, sending an icy rivulet down the back of his neck. 

It was going to be a long night.

  


* * *

  


The inn was smaller inside than it appeared from the outside, the quarters close and cramped. The ceilings were low and hewn from stone. Most of the features were carved into rock as well, from the shelves to the sinks. Temari and Tenten got their own room, while the rest made do on the floor of a six-tatami-width space. Their futons nearly overlapped when they unrolled them. 

At least the inn was warm, a fire blazing in the heart of the main room. The rest of the space was heated by geothermal vents from the underground hot springs the inn was built atop. The vents left the air smelling strange and mineral, thickly coating the tongue, but Gaara hadn't felt such heat in a month and a half. He found his shoulders relaxing as he slipped into one of the plush robes the innkeeper hung in the room's built-in closet, his toes curling pleasantly in the offered fleece-lined house slippers.

"We never get such big groups this far out," the old lady explained, as she poured them cups of piping hot peppermint tea and set a satsuma in front of each of their dinner plates. "Mostly couples on romantic getaways. You're not from around here, huh?"

Gaara had never seen the orange fruit before. He had his teeth halfway into its oily skin when the innkeeper barked a laugh and snatched it from him, peeling the fruit in a single long strip with just a practiced flick of her wrinkled hand. She passed it back to him, separated into neat segments, with a glint in her dark eyes.

"Definitely not from around here," she reiterated.

Gai bowed his head so far it nearly touched the surface of the low table. 

"No, ma'am! Unfortunately we are far afield from our homelands tonight, but we thank you very much for your hospitality in opening your space to us!"

The old lady raised an eyebrow. Her thick lips quirked. "You're paying me," she reminded him. "This is a business."

She turned then to Baki. He had not said so much as a single word since they had arrived ... not even when Kankuro had almost caught his cloak on fire, hovering too close over the hearth and hogging all the warmth.

"You," she said, pointing at him with one gnarled finger. "I like you. The strong, silent type." She nodded decisively and turned to hobble back to the kitchen.

As the door swing closed behind her, Gai's forehead hit the table with a _thunk._ "Always the quiet ones," he groaned in defeat. "Why can people not see the strength in a passionate, full-throated declaration of emotion?"

"You are so right, Gai-sensei!" Lee shouted. His eyes blazed even as he patted his teacher on the shoulder in consolation. "If I cannot make the innkeeper see the true strength of the Beautiful Blue Beast of Konoha, I will walk the remainder of our journey on my hands!"

"There's no shame in being underestimated," Gaara murmured, his eyes carefully on Lee's. "In fact, it can be strategically advantageous to have an enemy who thinks you nothing more than a joke."

"But that is dishonest!" Lee cried. His hand tensed into a fist, and the peel of his satsuma bulged between his fingers. Juice and pulp dripped to the table like so much spilled blood. 

"Is that important to you?" Gaara took a segment of his fruit and placed it in his mouth. The juice was sour, acrid, but the flesh was still sweet. He chewed quietly for a moment, then pulled a bit of stringy pith from between his teeth and laid it on his plate. It looked like a disembodied, bloodless vein as it lay there, softly shining with spit. "Honesty?"

"Of- of course it is!" Lee sputtered. The skin of his neck and chest had gone very red above the low collar of his robe. "A man should always speak the truth of his heart and his intentions. To fail to do so would be unbefitting of a- !"

The door of the kitchen swung wide, and the innkeeper returned with a large pot steaming in her cloth-wrapped hands.

"Don't let me interrupt," she said. She set down the clay-bottomed pot with a heaviness that shook the whole table. "Sounds like you were in the middle of something important."

Lee shook his head, his lips tight. "It was nothing." He bowed his head with a clap. "Thank you very much for the food!"

The old woman's eyes scanned over the eight of them, something knowing in her dark gaze. The sand in Gaara's gourd at his side rustled as her stare lingered on him.

"Well," she said finally. She removed the lid from the pot, dropping a ladle inside. "Eat up, then." 

Before she turned to leave, she pointed at Gaara. He froze. "You go first." Her gravelly voice was an order that could not be disobeyed. "Poor, skinny little thing. Look like you've never seen a proper nutrient in your whole life. 

“And you!" She whirled suddenly to Kankuro. "Chubby boy!" Kankuro stiffened but remained silent under the intensity of her glare. "Give him half your orange. He needs it more than you do."

Kankuro grumbled, but as the old lady's back retreated behind the kitchen doors again, he begrudgingly passed Gaara half of his fruit.

"You don't have to," Gaara said, trying to push it back onto his brother's plate.

"Yes I do," Kankuro whispered back, "or that granny will probably slit my throat in my sleep. Did you see that look she gave me? Wouldn't be surprised if she had her own entry in the Bingo Book."

Gaara rolled his eyes, but he did take the fruit. It tasted good, after all, and he really was hungry.

  


* * *

  


Dinner had been delicious. Simple fare, but better than any of them could manage on the trail. The hot stew stuck to Gaara's ribs, and now, as he lay on his futon searching for enough calmness to meditate, the heaviness hung in his stomach and left him vaguely ill. Everything was far too quiet without Lee’s chatter, however loud the gurgling of Kankuro’s stomach or the rumble of Gai’s snores. 

The room in which they slept was windowless, dense with the heat of bodies and that strong, mineral smell, but Gaara was still aware of the full moon outside, hanging like a millstone around the sky's neck. Even if he couldn't see it, he felt the moon's eye upon him, knowing him, pinning him in place. The whispering was loud in his ears again, more a rushing hiss than any true words, like steam being released from a kettle. Whatever Shukaku wanted to tell him tonight, he couldn't understand it. 

Gaara stood, then, and discovered another futon was also empty, the blankets neatly folded at the head of the mat. 

He followed the lingering trail of a familiar chakra to the inn's lobby.

It was almost midnight, but the innkeeper still sat behind the rough stone desk in the entry hall. 

She looked up at his approach and smiled. Her teeth were straight but stained from nicotine. The smell of a burnt cigarette haloed around her as Gaara approached. A single butt sat smoldering in the ashtray on the desk and masked the smell of the underground spring.

"Couldn't sleep?" she asked knowingly. 

“I … don’t,” he faltered. 

She raised an eyebrow, then shook another cigarette from her sleeve and lit it, her hand cupped around the cherry. “You don’t sleep.”

“Not if I can help it.”

She closed her eyes and took a long, slow drag of her cigarette. “Entrance to the springs is that-a-way.” She pointed to her right with the lit end, smoke trailing up and over her wrist. “That’s where your friend went.”

“He’s … ” _not my friend,_ Gaara didn’t say, _not anymore, not after what he said. Not after how I treated him. Not when we keep circling each other with mouths full of quarter-lies and half-truths._

Instead he quietly thanked her, and then he followed the beacon of her cigarette through an unmarked door.

The passageway down to the springs was low and sloping. As the wooden floors gave way to warm, damp stone, Gaara grew acutely aware of the weight of the mountain overhead, the absolute distance between himself and the moon. The mineral fog in the misty air grew stronger, and the air grew thick with hanging water droplets. The whispering in his ears dropped to a quiet lull. 

The walls of the cavern were sheer and jagged, facets of white-grey stone. They were uplit by strands of the electrical lights that seemed so abundant in Lightning, buzzing and flickering like fireflies trapped in their own individual jars. Water lapped at the edges of the rock, and Gaara’s breath felt heavy in his chest as he inhaled the wet air. 

Lee was sitting on the far side of the cavern, a towel draped over his face and his head tipped back. The whole of his body looked scarred from this distance, striated with the light refracting off the dark water and the flat stone walls. His arms were outstretched along the side of the pool, and he was breathing very slowly, very deeply. 

Gaara set his gourd down heavily. 

The damp hand towel hit the water with a _thwap_ as Lee raised his head. 

“Oh! Gaara-kun!” Lee focused on a point over Gaara’s shoulder, eyes wide, and dropped his voice to a whisper. “What are you doing here?” 

“I was restless.” Gaara dipped a toe into the water. It was piping hot; his skin immediately turned bright pink. Perfect. Lee’s face went very red from the water’s heat as Gaara disrobed and slipped into the hot spring. “Why are you still awake?” 

Gaara crossed to Lee’s side of the pool in a few short steps. The stones on the bottom of the pool were smooth and slick, so he focused his chakra in his feet to center himself as he crossed. He wondered how Lee had made it over here--likely by sheer force of will and carefully trained balance. Gaara sat down beside him. 

Lee’s shoulders stiffened, and he edged away. His eyes remained fixed on the cavern’s entrance while he spoke. “Ah, I guess … I got used to sleeping under the stars. You know how it is.”

Gaara didn’t, so he said nothing.

“Listen, Gaara-kun,” Lee blurted, “I know this is probably the most awkward possible moment to be having this conversation, but if I don’t say something now I might lose my nerve.” He still wouldn’t look Gaara in the eye. 

Gaara wasn’t sure what Lee meant by ‘awkward’. The hot water and Lee’s proximity were conspiring to make him feel the most relaxed he had in weeks. He edged closer. A reminder: _I’m right here._

“If I did something …” Lee continued, “or said something … to make you upset--even if it was while I was sleeping!--I hope you know I didn’t mean it. I … I really value your- your _companionship_ , and I thought that maybe we were building up to being good friends, and … ” Tears were welling in Lee’s eyes now. His face was crumpled with emotion; Lee was what Temari called as an ‘ugly crier’, wrinkles puckered all the way down his chin. “I just … don’t know what I did wrong. And if you don’t tell me, I can’t fix it.” His voice was urgent. “I _want_ to fix it.” 

He finally turned to look at Gaara, eyes overflowing. A tear broke free and started trailing down his cheek. His gaze dropped to Gaara’s shoulders but just as quickly snapped back to his face. He inhaled through his nose and gave a long, shuddery exhale. 

The moon’s weight pressed down on Gaara and made him still. Lee’s eyes were searching his, the reflection of a dozen sparkling lights captured in the bell of the teardrop making its way towards his jawline. Gaara’s breath caught in his throat, and it felt like pushing through cobwebs to speak. 

“Kankuro says you’re in love with me.”

Lee spluttered. “I- in love?” His face went redder. “It is- it is merely a small crush! I mean nothing improprietous!” His wide eyes went yet wider, and he clapped both hands over his mouth, as if he had just revealed some secret Gaara wasn’t meant to know. 

“I know,” Gaara said. “You told me.”

“Wha- Told you?” Lee’s voice was high and squeaky between his interlaced fingers. “ _When?”_

“When you were sleeping.” 

“I say many outrageous and untrue things in my sleep!” Lee yelped.

Gaara felt a sudden, steady calm. Deep in his chest, something cracked, like roots breaking through stone. “Was that one of them?” 

Lee’s eyes dropped to the surface of the water. From his shoulder down to his left hand, his skin glistened with scar tissue. He was as red as he had been when he had opened the Gates, back at the chuunin exams, when burst capillaries had flooded his body with blood. 

“No,” he admitted.

“You also said you wanted to kiss me.”

“This _really_ isn’t a good time to be talking about any of this- ”

“Was that true, too?”

“Yes.” The word left Lee in a breath. 

Gaara crossed his arms over his chest. “Are you going to do anything about it?” 

Lee shook his head. He was watching his own hands, trailing circles on the surface of the pool. Concentric ripples spread out and broke against Gaara’s skin. “No,” he said. “Not unless you want me to.”

“I don’t.” 

A smile rose to Lee’s face then, but it was small, and it didn’t reach his eyes. There were more tears on his face, now. Gaara wasn’t sure when they had gotten there. “I didn’t think you would.” He looked up, from under his long, dark lashes, and met Gaara’s eyes. The electric lights reflected in the black of his irises and turned his eyes into starscapes. “But, can we still be friends?” 

Something settled, warm and content, in Gaara’s chest. The whispering had fallen silent, and in its place, something hummed. It sounded nothing like Shukaku's voice at all. He nodded. 

“Yes,” he agreed. “Friends.”

  


* * *

  


Things returned to normal, after that. At least, insofar as 'normal' included a taijutsu specialist with a penchant for nighttime charades adhering like a barnacle to a twitchy demon container while babbling in his sleep.

The moon was three-quarters full and waning, and Gaara sat with Lee's sleeping head on his shoulder, watching the snow fall. It had started up just after 2 AM. They snow had been just tiny speckles at first, barely even whispers of precipitation. But now they clung together like arms embracing, and fat, fluffy flakes swirled slowly down in little eddies of air. They made no sound when they landed, but that absence of sound, the thick blanket absorbing each of the woods' snapping twigs and the fire's popping sparks, was like a sound unto itself. A silence, deafening in its breadth. Gaara's mind was very quiet, and Lee's breath was warm on his ear.

Lee had reached out at some point in his slumber, and now he was wrapped around Gaara with both arms, one hand fisted at the place where the hood of Gaara's cloak met his shoulder. The other had drifted down as he had slipped into unconsciousness, and it rested atop Gaara's gloved hand in what could hardly even be called _holding_. 

Gaara felt a sense of calm the likes of which he'd never fathomed. He was warmer even than when he had sat within the hot spring, but it wasn't a physical warmth. There was something within his belly, placid and deep, a spring bubbling within his chest. 

Lee smacked his lips, but Gaara didn't startle.

"Gaara, look out," he mumbled. Gaara knew better than to be alarmed. "They're coming."

"Who's coming?" Gaara's voice when he spoke was softer than the falling snow, as if its flurries had stripped away his voice and now his consonants, too, fell gently upon the ground before them.

“These guys.” Lee’s fingers skittered up Gaara’s arm like the legs of some small, warm-blooded creature and came to rest in Gaara’s hair. He smiled, and Gaara felt the curve of his lips against his ear. “Gotcha.”

“Oh,” Gaara said. Then, very slowly, he reached out towards Lee in turn. His fingers shook as he walked them cautiously up the column of Lee’s spine, obscured by the bulk of his vest and cloak, until they found purchase in the ends of Lee’s hair. His hair was thick, straight and shiny like silk. Gaara’s fingers tangled there, fingertips pressed to the hot skin of Lee’s scalp. 

“Gotcha,” he whispered back.

  


* * *

  


At the gates to Konoha, they all paused, unsure what to say. 

Kankuro scuffed his foot against the dirt and was the first to speak. 

“It was cool workin’ with you guys,” he told the ground, “even if it _was_ a resounding failure. You’re not half bad for a bunch of Leaf Village weirdos. So uh, good teamwork. Or whatever.”

Tenten dropped her pack and grabbed Temari in an impulsive hug. Temari went stiff as a cat falling in water, but, gradually, her hands raised to pat Tenten’s back. 

“And your team as well!” Gai exclaimed. He grabbed Baki’s hand in both of his and began shaking it so hard his turban jostled. “Truly an inspirational group of youths! Why, it brings me right back to my genin days, when I- ”

“Gaara-kun,” Lee whispered. Gaara looked up and found Lee centimeters away. Over his shoulder, Neji was watching them with a subtly raised upper lip. “Can I speak to you for a moment?” 

The forest around Konoha was thick, the ground frozen solid under heavy snow. They found a space behind a holly bush, not far from the trail, but hidden from prying eyes. The sharp points of the leaves snatched at Gaara’s cloak as he followed Lee into the woods. 

Lee turned to face him and took a deep, steadying breath. 

“Hello,” he said. “Um … hi.” 

_Hi._ It was so casual that Gaara almost laughed. He sounded exactly as he did when he was sleeping. 

“Hi,” Gaara echoed. 

“Um, I wanted to ask, but I didn’t want you to feel pressured.” Lee’s hands were fidgeting, uncharacteristically nervous, with the edges of his cloak. “Would it be okay if I- if I hugged you?” 

Gaara didn’t have to think before he responded. 

“No.” 

Lee nodded. His eyes were downcast for a moment, but then he looked up at Gaara and smiled. “I understand.” 

“I’m not ready,” Gaara explained, “yet.”

Lee’s smile erupted into a beaming grin. His teeth caught a shaft of light that parted the trees’ leaves, and his whole expression lit up like a sunbeam. “That is fine!” he said. “I would wait forever! Or … or never. If you never want it.” 

Gaara’s throat went sour. He inched closer. His hand stretched out, quite without his permission, and found Lee’s hand on the edge of his cloak, settling atop it and stilling it. “I might want it. Eventually.”

Lee’s eyes were nearly closed with the size of his grin. There was a gentle pressure, and Gaara looked down to find Lee squeezing his hand. His face felt terribly warm. 

“And a kiss,” he added, just in case Lee mistook his intentions. “One day.” A heartbeat. “Not today.” 

“I will wait for that day eagerly!” 

They stood there for a very long time, Gaara’s hand feeling small within Lee’s grasp, until their teams called their names, and they broke apart.

  


* * *

  


The first place Gaara went--once they had returned to Suna and filed their pathetic excuse for a mission report--was Yashamaru’s house. The rooms within were unchanged, save the dust that scurried across the floor, but they felt somehow hollower, emptier. 

The teddy bear was still beneath the rug where he had left it, and he retrieved it, holding it up to the warm desert sun that crept through the sand-scarred window panes. He rubbed the dirt from its bead-black nose with the edge of his jacket’s sleeve. 

Back in his room, he set the bear on the windowsill and dedicated a moment to arranging the tufts of its ears just-so.

“Dinner’s ready,” said Temari from the door of his room. “It’ll be a relief to eat something other than rice porridge and solider pills, huh?”

When he didn’t respond, he heard the soft pads of her footsteps approaching him. Then, “Oh.” Her voice came from just over his shoulder. “You found a friend.”

“Yes,” Gaara said, not looking at the bear at all. In the reflection of the window, he saw his own face, and his sister behind him. Her hand was reaching slowly for his shoulder, telegraphing her movements so he wouldn’t startle. “I think I did.”

  


* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Lee sings is a real song, and apparently also the reason why Christmas Eve in Japan is considered a romantic holiday. It's called "Koibito ga Santa Claus". It's supposedly like the Japanese version of "All I Want for Christmas is You." [You can listen to it here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZUglqyF4cw) (Warning: It's _extremely_ catchy.) 
> 
> Also, I'm still taking prompts over on my Tumblr, so [hit me up](https://ghoste-catte.tumblr.com/post/190001356247/happy-new-year-smut-requests-open) if there's something you want written!

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: This is set during the period between the end of OG Naruto and the beginning of Shippuden, so Gaara is still struggling with his mental health and Shukaku is still a factor. The story includes themes of auditory hallucinations / intrusive thoughts / demon possession (which of these applies is left as an exercise to the reader), discussion of offscreen canon-typical violence and human rights abuses, and canon-typical child abuse and neglect ... but it really is a humor story at its core. It's just hard to wrangle Gaara's relationships during that time period without a _little_ bit of darkness.


End file.
